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DreamWorks Switches to Linux
tal-home writes "Newsforge has a story about the decision Dreamworks made to port ALL of their front-end servers and workstations to Linux.
Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' which will hit the theaters in late May, was created in a 100% Linux enviroment, unlike older movies like Shrek and Lord of the Rings that used IRIX servers as a rendering farm. It's a good time to mention that this move by DreamWorks also includes porting the artists workstations to Linux, in addition to the servers.
Redhat and HP helped out in the switch." Word has it that Adobe may be pursuing unix versions of it's toolset as DreamWorks isn't the only shop switching.
This is great news if it means having quality graphics software available under linux. The Gimp just doesn't provide a compelling alternative for serious professional shops. Adobe ports to linux would be a Good Thing and then some.
Linux was used for the final rendering of Shrek, etc, but SGI was still used for the modelling and animation. Now, even that will be Linux (using Maya for Linux, and PDI's own tools)
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
With Final Cut Pro, Maya, and the Adobe lineup now shipping, it seems like OS X would be a platform of choice...
Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron'
A bit O/T I guess, but I had to note that I've unfortunately seen the preview for this film a number of times, and when you're dying for thew preview to end, it doesn't exactly speak well of the film. Whatta piece of wasteful pop pablum.
We're talking completely empty prepackaged Britney Spears - style crap here.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Well, actually, I really like AFI. I didn't know they were signed to Dreamworks! When did that happen?
and Linux becomes illegal (you can't have efective copy prevention with source code), what will the movie studios (the same who pushed the SSSCA in the first place) use then?
The article summary is wrong. IRIX was used for frontend modelling. But Shrek WAS rendered finally on Linux -- indeed Shrek was distinctive as it was the first major full-length film to be totally rendered on Linux.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I want to know, why on earth would Dreamworks want to switch to Linux.
Yeah, too bad there's not some sort of article about it to explain why they switched.
After the Dmitry and DMCA flop by Adobe, I will never purchase an Adobe product and I swear to gawd I will save my friends and co-workers from thinking about purchasing an Adobe product. So, if Adobe is finally convinced it can make a few more bucks by porting its apps to Linux, perhaps Adobe needs to correct its public relations fiasco and not with a mere press release, but something more sublime; maybe a contribution to EFF? Until such an event, no way, no how, Adobe --- not on this Linux box. I will not just forget Adobe's mistake and I hope others will not.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
Weta digital used a bunch of linux boxes as well as irix (and some other OSs too I believe) in producing the cgi stuff for LoTR (Weta Digital is Peter Jacksons digital effects company). check here for their website
Well.
Unfortunately there's too many patents in the field. It is impossible to create a software which doesn't violate at least some of them. For example color management is highly protected area. From this background it's pretty simple why there isn't any commercially viable open source options available...
Ville
I'd sell my soul for photoshop in linux. OK, well maybe not my soul. My conscience, maybe.
GIMP is great, but it's no photoshop.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Count me in. What's holding me back from Linux is that I can't run the programs you mentioned, plus After Effects, Lightwave, and some of the other Win things I use.
As an animator, I can tell you that I'm really excited about studios moving over to Linux. What's great about Linux is that you can run it on any platform.
I'll tell you something, Apple totally kicks ass when it comes to making laptops. I'm very happy that Lightwave 7 and all Adobe products are available on it. As a matter of fact, I am *Heavily* considering purchasing one of these machines. If the programs I mentioned ran on Linux, I'd have no qualms about buying a Mac. At that point, it wouldn't really matter!
I *Love* the idea of being totally platform independent. I could finally break out of the Windows cage.
"Derp de derp."
From this article at CIO.com:
"At the film company DreamWorks, Ed Leonard has ported the entire graphics animation department to Linux; Shrek was created on a "renderfarm" (a powerful, refrigerator-size rack of servers) that had 800 processors running Linux. Leonard took the money he saved by not having maintenance contracts and used it to buy far more inexpensive Linux PCs. He says the money he has saved will allow DreamWorks to replace desktops and the renderfarm every two years instead of every five."
Am I missing something here?
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Apple forced/coerced Adobe into abandoning Photoshop and Illustrator on IRIX many years ago. The last version was 3.01 and 5.5 respectivly. Some of the things in Photoshop that Apple is always using to benchmark their systems is done in real time on certain SGI systems. It is a pitty that one cannot get a current license for IRIX.
Search usenet for some interesting stories about Adobe shiating on their UNIX customers.
This is great news and shows the curtain is really starting to close on Redmond.
:)
9 32 , 0.asp
I just read that Doug Miller is now in charge of a UNIX migration hit-team at Microsoft. They don't mention alternative OS's unless they absolutely HAVE to. Hehe.
It's a ZiffDavis story no less....
http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=1884&a=25
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
We're pro-MPAA today? I thought that was Tuesdays.
Reasons for the switch (from the article):
1. Reliability
2. Scalability
3. Capable of high performance on the deskto
4. Cost-effective to maintain
5. Uses commodity, Intel-based hardware
The transition to Linux required that PDI/DreamWorks port all of its own tools from SGI. Few of the high-end commercial graphics tools supported Linux out of the box. Together, HP and PDI/DreamWorks worked to convince Alias|Wavefront and others that they needed to port their applications to Linux. Ultimately, HP and PDI/DreamWorks were successful, and DreamWorks has fully integrated Linux versions of all of its major tools including Maya and Wacom's Cintiq interactive pen display.
The future isn't what it used to be.
I have a friend who refuses to go to Linux full time until he can get Photoshop
There are two things keeping me from Linux:
1. Crappy multimedia support in the form of DVD software, mpeg4/divx and other video codecs, sound drivers, etc.
and
2. The abscence of a no-problems Photoshop instance.
Games don't even count in my book, *but* I make all my $$$ with a copy of Photoshop open. Sorry, the Gimp is nice and all... played with it extensively in fact... but it just doesn't cut it upside Photoshop. Maybe it will in the near future. Wine is okay, but I've seen Photoshop run under Wine and it ain't pretty.
Since #1 is being worked on and in most cases workarounds like apps that will use the win32 codecs for various MPEG4 formats, a working Linux version of Photoshop would completely end my dependance on Microsoft.
My dependance on evil Adobe is another matter....
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It's fan-freaking-tastic.
[Check out the paper here]
That was just the rendering back end. Anything with a user interface was done under IRIX.
-- SIGFPE
The entire push to make Linux a corporate desktop system is still too fragmented and too much like a battle of wills. On one side, people lament that there's no Photoshop or Premiere or MS Office, or insert-needed-app-here. On the other, people complain that the open source equivalents are good enough and just use those and stop whining.
You're both right, now shut the hell up and do what you can to make it all come together. Until people -feel- that open source equivalents to the commercial software are better, they won't settle for them unless they're forced to by ideology or economy. What will it take to make people feel the open source projects are better or even equal? I can't answer that, but watch the press. When the pundits start changing tune, then you'll be on the right track. For now, encourage and embrace the commercial applications. They'll do nothing but increase open source market and mind shares in the long run.
If you can code, do what you can for the project of your choice. If not, and there are some of us out here that can't, just keep an open mind and take the long view. Be patient, and maybe give the can-do's a kick in the pants once in a while.
*kick*
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"fter the Dmitry and DMCA flop by Adobe, I will never purchase an Adobe product and I swear to gawd I will save my friends and co-workers from thinking about purchasing an Adobe product..."
I sympathize with your view, but the reason that Adobe is so popular is because it makes a totally kick as series of products. If I lose Photoshop or After Effects, I don't have a whole lot of good choices to replace them with, especially for the money. You wouldn't be 'saving me' from Adobe, you'd be hurting me if you convinced me to switch.
I really don't like what they did with Dmitry, but I need a solution to express my disgruntlement with them that doesn't involve crippling my productivity.
I have the same issue with Blizzard. I've been asked to boycott Blizzard over using the DMCA to shut down BnetD. The problem I have with that is a healthy game industry = better job market for me. Blizzard consistently makes kick ass games. Not buying Blizzard 3 would do more to work against me than help prevent them from further DMCA abuse. On top of that, I think Warcarft III will be lots of fun, and I'd hate to miss out on that too.
So what do we do? I'm open to suggestions as to how to let these companies know what they're doing is unacceptable without creating ripples in the good work that they're doing. One idea is to make their email address available so people can write in their complaints. Another would be to have Slashdot carry a banner encouraging people to read about what happened and, again, give them an email address they can send complaints to.
Personally, I think this would be far more effective than saying "I won't buy your product even tho I need it."
"Derp de derp."
P-p-p-p-lease listen to me before moding me down! Gives readers the Roger Rabbit pouty look
It was interesting to note they had a problem with it for desktop use (including problems with XFree86). This has been one of the issues plaguing Linux now and hurting its foray into the desktop or workstation market: there are polishing features that need to be done.
Now, the good news is XFree86 did fix things up. Did the XFree86 team even know Dreamworks were having problems it? I mean, when there's a big opportunity for Linux, we really need to get the teams involved. It makes skitish users feel better, and more importantly, it gets the "hacker" culture a better idea of what the user culture needs. No contempt or animosity. Just people helping people.
Another thing is the polish. Fixing those annoying little bugs, or getting that useful feature in that no one has time to do. IBM and their billion dollars could help here, but there does need to be more support for the Open Source polishers out there (like the Linux janitors). Have you submitted a patch lately? :-)
So, hopefully, Linus and his informal team can clear up the bottleneck for patches and we can make Linux ready for primetime. Right now, I consider the current releases of Linux on the desktop to be about the same quality as Windows 3.1, and that took over the world! So let's report those annoying features! Let's leave the cool feature aside for a day and fix an annoying, but persistent bug. Then we go back to even cooler features!
Currently, the biggest challenge for Linux is making the installation painless. The problem is not that Linux developers don't want to--its just as I'm sure they can tell you, getting the hardware and drivers they need is really difficult. I'm not sure how we, as a community, can help that. Maybe mass-buy a new graphics card if the company produces a Linux driver off the bat?
Just some, hopefully, constructive and positive thoughts.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
If you (or your friend) want something like Photoshop on Linux, don't just complain, do something about it. Write down what features you use and want in a tool, participate in a project like the Gimp, contribute code, key-bindings, and ideas. For open source software, it's very simple: software gets the features that the people who contribute to it want.
Six months ago, Adobe was evil incarnate here on Slashdot. Today there's an unsubstantiated rumor that they might port their proprietary DMCA-protected crap to Linux and suddenly they're an Angelic mom-and-pop operation that can do no wrong.
When this lame movie comes out on DVDCCA region-encoded SSSCA copy-protected discs you'll all be like kids in a toy store, and the hell with Dmitry Sklyarov or Ed Felten or Eric Corley and what they suffered through because of companies like Adobe.
You people are the best supporters Eisner and Hollings could ever ask for.
As an animator, I can tell you that I'm really excited about studios moving over to Linux. What's great about Linux is that you can run it on any platform.
You might want to brush up a little... Just because something runs on Linux, doesn't mean it'll run on the version of Linux that's available for your platform.
In general, it seems that when a developer announces a port to Linux, that usually means Linux on an x86 platform.
So, as much as i'd like to see Apple get the hardware sale, you'd better make certain that the applications are available for your particular flavor/platform prior to rushing out and buying a spanking new powerbook G4, or whatever their next latest-and-greatest laptop happens to be...
In the article, they specifically mention that even this time around, there were roadblocks to them adopting Linux as a desktop OS for their artists. Although they don't mention specifics, they said they worked with HP and Red Hat and got the problems resolved.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
I'm a little surprised they also switched the workstations to Linux as well. In the short term I can imagine that being a real headache, but in the long term...I dunno.. that could be a really good thing.
.AVI, and then track my mouse movements over the movie. While it played back, I moved the mouse around the items of interest and saved that information into a text file. Then I converted the text file into a Lightwave motion file and loaded it into the eyes.
When you do 3D animation (or digital art of any kind, really...) you don't just have one or two programs that do all the work. You have to constantly come up with new and creative solutions to animation problems. When this happens, the artists really get close to their machines. I'll give you an example: I'm a Lightwave animator running on Windows 2000. Lightwave's scene files are text based, which means I can modify a scene without necessarily having to do it through Lightwave itself.
I had a problem once where I wanted to animate realistic eye movement. Doing it by hand would be incredibly time consuming (Not to mention repetitive...) So I came up with an inventive solution. I parented the camera in Lightwave to the 'neck' of the person, and rendered a wide-angle avi from that person's perspective. Then I wrote a quick VB-App that used MS's Media Player ActiveX control to play back the
The effect was surprising! Within 6 hours or so of programming, I had written a primitive mo-cap (Mouse capture?) program that would be useful for a lot of things, not just eye movement. All this was possible because I understood VB, Windows 2000, and Lightwave. This happened to be so valuable that I bought a Windows 2000 laptop so I could experiment more with this technique in my free time.
The reason I'm surprised at the workstations switch (I should say 'initially surprised...') is that familiarity with your computer/OS is key to coming up with inventive solutions to problems. Since Linux is fairly new to the animation scene (on the creation side, not the rendering side...), it's hard to imagine those entering the animators job market would already be experienced with that OS. They'd have to re-learn how to use their computers. That may or may not be a problem, but it's a concern I have.
My point of view on this topic is starting to change after I started to write this post. It is starting to make more sense now. It is a lot easier to get my hands on a personal copy of Linux than it is to get Windows 2000 or OSX. At that point, the brand of processor becomes the least of my concerns, just the speed of it. It'll take some getting used to, but when all the dust settles, I think Dream Works will be in for a nice boost in productivity.
What I did with VB sounds like it'd be far easier on Linux. I can imagine 3D Animators eventually having more and more programming/scripting capabilities at their disposal. With these skills comes a more robust solution for any problems that arise. Hmm... maybe I should build a Linux box now.
"Derp de derp."
I think you are more or less correct. You can write an application that violates patents, you just can't try to sell it.
Unfortunately, having patent infringement problems really affects widespread adoption of your software. Nobody wants to risk distributing it, for fear of the patent holder. The Debian Project, for example, won't go near patent-infringing works, unless it's something stupid like the XOR or the File/Save-As patent. Why? Partly for their own liability, but mostly because of the Debian Social Contract. Quoting from point #4 in the Social Contract:
In other words, Debian avoids patent-restricted software so that people who want to use Debian for commercial purposes - reselling official CDs, selling unofficial CDs, or making / selling derivative works - can do so without having to pore through the license texts of thousands of packages. They want you to just assume that when you download an official Debian package, you are free to use it however you wish, and free to redistribute it with or without modifications, possibly subject to some restrictions as noted in the DFSG.
Remember, even free software is bought and sold - just ask SuSE or Red Hat. And it's not likely that Red Hat can just negotiate a patent license for their customers when needed - their CD sets have too little profit margin as it is.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
"In general, it seems that when a developer announces a port to Linux, that usually means Linux on an x86 platform."
I understand this is a likely case, but consider that right *now* Adobe makes nearly all their products on Mac. I seriously doubt that they'd ignore the Mac/Linux market and focus on Intel/Linux. Isn't it basically just a recompile for them?
"Derp de derp."
a patent can prevent you from using an invention. So it doesnt matter if you are charging for it or not if you are using it you infringe.
Of course if you are just a hobbyist you are probably not causing damages, so noone will bother suiing.
Did you notice the quote from one exec/manager who explicity expressed that their reasons for moving were not based on preference or politics, but on cost?
If the only reason for linux is the political aspect of it, then I'm afraid many zealots are fighting for a lost cause. Personally, I like the polital aspects of using Linux/GPL/etc.. software, but seperately I also enjoy the other aspects, including productivity, cost, openness (which isn't neccessarily political) and the geek factor.
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
So how much money did they save by switching to an all Linux-based solution? That is the kind of info that Linux advocates need to be spreading if they want it to get out to a corporate level.
Berto
Not to quibble or anything, but Shrek was rendered on a Linux farm, a Red Hat Linux farm. The success and quality of that movie is the reason that large firms like Kodak have started looking into porting thier now SGI image and digital film apps to Linux.
About all the Adobe links here, GIMP!!! Manipulate your images with Gnu Image Manipulation Program. I've switched several formerly psychoticly addicted Photoshop people over to it and they are exceedingly happy. Given, it doesn't have ALL the features of Photoshop, but it's really close and most of the graphic artists that I've worked with use the features that are available in both GIMP and Photo, Photo only features; not so much.
-Runz
psychotically addicted? Hmph, as anyone who's ever spoken to REAL graphics artists will know, the GIMP is a piece of trash. As a graphics artist I find its feature set sorely lacking. Addicted as they may have been they probably only used photoshop in a limited capacity if they found switching so easy.
You seem to think that photoshop only has a few features which the gimp does not. Photoshop has so many more features that its rediculous to even compare them in the same category.
Can GIMP do ant-aliasing as well? NO
Can GIMP handle Vector shapes? NO
Can GIMP handle the new advanced brush textures in PS7? NO
Can GIMP handle print graphics (CMYK)? NO
Can GIMP smoothly interoperate with other powerfull graphics apps? NO
Can GIMP automagically generate SANE reading HTML for quick web prototyping (don't diss the WYSIWYG in photoshop till you see it, it's not even close to front page)? NO
The list goes on and on. The GIMP is good at what it was meant to do, be a simple tool for editing RGB images, but to compare it to photoshop is incorrect. Even the GIMP (who have done a great job) acknoledges that.
Photos.
Isn't it basically just a recompile for them?
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Mac Linux/Adobe applications. It's not 'just a recompile'. Adobe works hard to optimize their products for a specific architecture - Altivec and SIMD play large in the ability of Adobe products to manipulate images. In addition the effectiveness of Adobe applications depends quite a bit on the quality of the hardware support - and Mac Linux is definitely not very strong in this regard.
We are not talking about a port of some simple integer based application like grep here. Adobe spends a lot of time optimizing their code at a low level. And then there is the matter of after-market support. Photoshop users are not going to move to Linix if their 3rd party plug ins aren't available.
1. Crappy multimedia support in the form of DVD software, mpeg4/divx and other video codecs, sound drivers, etc.
:( ), and less popular formats like iD's CIN format (Quake2 movies) and VIVO formats (only used for pr0n AFAIK)
Try MPlayer... this is the best video player i've seen, it supports DVD's, DivX, a number of windows AVI codecs, Quicktime (no Sorenson though
Mplayer homepage
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Here's an interesting question: does anyone know what kind of computer hardware is Disney using at their feature animation department in Burbank, CA nowadays? I believe that Disney's Computer Aided Production System (CAPS) for compositing digital and hand-drawn animation elements into a single film is based on SGI hardware, though I think if Disney could port the CAPS tools to Linux and run them on x86-based Athlon XP or Pentium 4 machines with one to two gigabytes of RAM per machine on a rendering farm level could save Disney a boatload of money.
Clearly this guy didn't do his research, as others have pointed out Shrek was rendered on Linux, and Weta used a render farm of SGI 1200 Intel Linux boxes for "Lord of the Rings".
2 001/011 56783.html
See here:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/linux/
Weta used mostly SGI Octanes for 3D and compositing workstations so whats new about dreamworks is that they are switching all the artists workstations to Linux because already for several years now most big VFX houses have been using SGI and NT workstations and Linux render farms.
with all of the pressure coming down from the top of the computing power food-chain. Perhaps its time to write a version of MSWindows for linux?
What did you expect him to say? That they're hypocrites indeed? On cost hey? I care about cost to, yet it's illegal for me to download movies and audios for free.
In short, they're saying that they welcome our help and they love our licenses but they'll maintain there stupid policies and there closed/proprietary/not good licenses.
"Lightwave... what a pile of crap. in the few minutes after I read your overlong post, I've made about the same thing in MELscript."
:) I never claimed that VB was the only way to do what I did. I was just saying it was cool that I was able to do it.
Lol, that is the most absurd logic I've ever heard. Instead of offending me, you made me laugh! Thanks, I needed that.
Maya's a good tool, but you have to dump over $10,000 per seat into it if you want to beat Lightwave. Lightwave's renderer alone beats the pants off of Maya's. You have to spend like $5,000 to get Renderman if you want decent renderings out of Maya. I guess you should do a little more research on the product you're bashing.
"Derp de derp."
"Those who wouldn't give up their productivity to preserve their freedoms deserve neither freedom nor productivity."
That's a fair statement, except it doesn't get you anywhere. If I gave up using Adobe Products, how would Adobe know? I already paid for it. They wouldn't notice until an upgrade or two later that they're not selling as well. Even then, how would they connect that my not buying their product to something they did?
That's why I said "I need a better solution than boycotting." (I should have clarified that some more, I apologize.)
Now, if somebody said "Everybody who uses Adobe Products but hates what they did with Dimitry, take a day off of work and attend a protest.", then I think we'd get our message across. I'd be willing to drop Adobe for a day to make a huge vocal stink.
See what I'm saying now?
"Derp de derp."
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for Photoshop on Linux because not a lot has happened in the UI front since this comment was written.
"It's buggy and riddled with unwanted features... "
Says you. Photoshop has the largest set of USEFUL tools, not to mention a very mature interface. Photoshop may be considered 'bloated', but it's the nicest kind of bloat. Any advanced user of Photoshop knows what I'm talking about. It's not like Word where you have Clippy trying to help you at every step.
"Derp de derp."
You misunderstand. The GPL only restricts the way software is redistributed. Unless Dreamworks starts selling or licensing their modifications to others, they're under no obligation to release anything.
However, releasing their modifications back to the community will eventually end up improving Dreamworks' own situation, as the modifications are debugged, widely adopted, and improved upon.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Hmm... Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong studio. It was either Final Fantasy or Shrek (Could have sworn it was Shrek...) where they used both PC's and Macs to do the development work, but Linux was used to do the rendering. At night, they used the Mac and PC workstations to do rendering also.
I might have my facts a little mixed up.
"Derp de derp."
A beowulf cluster of Dreamworks rendering farms!
/. go back and forth.
how's that. Old or not, it's still pretty amusing watching
Why oh why is Dreamworks settling for RedHat on its workstations and front-end servers (and renderers?) when all of those platforms require speed?
I really hope that they were able to obtain non-i386 binaries (not generic RedHat RPMs) for their platforms (ie, optimal gcc compiler flags). If the programs they use are not open source, hopefully the authors will provide extremely specific binaries for every platform on which they intend their programs to run.
If this is not the case, they are losing major performance to what could have been.
"BTW, LW 7.5 is supposed to be announced today in New York. Also, NewTek has been saying there will be a "Linux announcement" "soon" since sometime last year. Today would be nice. :-)"
Wow, that's the first I heard of that. If LW were made for Linux I'd be ready to build a Linux box just to try it!
"Derp de derp."
The author clearly doesn't understand the relationship between Dreamworks Animation and Dreamworks/PDI.
Dreamworks Animation has thus far released "tradigital" (digitized traditional) animated movies "Prince of Egypt" and "Road to El Dorado", both of which used IRIX as the focus of their pipelines, and who will be releasing "Sprit: Stallion of the Cimmaron" Memorial Day weekend, which was split between IRIX and Linux. Two key workstation applications were developed for use on Spirit, and rendering mostly stayed on IRIX.
PDI/Dreamworks is a full CG production house which has been in the special effects and commerical spots business for years (Seen those alien Intel ads recently? That was PDI.), and has recently made "ANTZ" and "Shrek". ANTZ was all IRIX, Shrek was split between IRIX and Linux, with IRIX still the most popular on the workstation and Linux was used heavily for rendering.
HP provided lots of assistance with OpenGL workstation compliance on Linux - which undoubtedly contributed to them getting the 3-year deal mentioned in the article. Dreamworks also presently has a support contract with RedHat (as RedHat cited recently in their quarterly report). Dreamworks Animation and PDI/Dreamworks have been requesting Linux versions of various graphics applications and tools since Linux was decided upon several years back.
These statements are my own and not those of my employer.
"That's a cool hack, but creating an object in-scene that the eyes follow that you can place and key is really rather easy in Maya."
.AVI and recording my mouse movements over the movie. I'm not talking about pointing an object at a null object and moving that around. I'm talking about capturing mouse movements. *wonders if we're talking about the same thing...* heh.
Are we talking about the same thing? I'm talking about playing an
"Derp de derp."
... people would learn how to distinguish between "porting" and "migrating", so that they do not appear as complete fools when posting a topic.
You migrate a (physical) server or workstation. Applications get ported. It appears as if this article is talking about both; this isn't apparently obvious upon first reading the introduction.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Isn't the full name of Dreamworks "SKG Dreamworks" where S = Speilberg, K = Katzenberg (formerly of Disney) and G = Gates? So unless they kicked the goy out, this has got to be pretty embarrassing for Microsoft too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"You could always try it on OS X..."
Want to hear something interesting? LW 7.5 (and 7 I think..) has a license that explicitly lets you change between Mac and PC. I have a USB dongle with LW 7, so If I had a Mac around I could install LW on it. (I need the Mac disk, though...)
I am sooooo happy with Newtek about this. I will be buying a new laptop within the next year, and I'm really having a tough time deciding between a PC Laptop and a Mac laptop. Now that I can run LW on either platform, I really don't have a whole lot of reason to not get a Mac. Now I can spend more time worrying about the color of the casing... *G*
"Derp de derp."
There was a Linux Journal article last August which discussed Dreamwork's transition to GNU/Linux. To answer your question about productivity, one animator claimed she was moving twice as fast as before the switch. I expect this is mostly because of updated hardware, and not some GNU/Linux-Zen thing.
You can find the article here.
-Paul Komarek
I am surprised that Lightwave hasn't come to Linux yet. It has been my experience that Lightwave animators are the people that come to animation from the computer side of things and not the artistic side of things. Mostly though, Lightwave has been on Amiga, WinNT, MacOS, MacOS X, Sun OS, and SGI. The transition to linux I would think would be very easy since the x86 code is there and the unix style ports are there. Linux is also kind of the new SGI.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
"But the answer is, if you are doing graphics, get it. It is 100% worth the extra money. "
I'm not arguing with you about Maya's capabilities, but you need to understand that COST is a huge factor of a 3D rendering program. If you're doing broadcast animation (like Foundation Imaging does for Enterprise/Voyager/Deep Space Nine), then you don't have $10,000 to spend on one seat of Software. Lightwave until recently cost $2,500. Subsequent upgrades were/are $500. Maya (until recently) was several thousand ($4000-$7000), and if you wanted quality rendering you had to shell out extra for a renderer. And what does that buy you? For television, not a whole lot.
Lightwave has a kick ass renderer out of the box. It is second only to Renderman. Lightwave's character animation tools are great, it's modelling tools are excellent, and it's interface is customizable to boot.
Could Maya beat Lightwave in most aspects? Sure. Is Maya worth the multitude in cost over Lightwave? Maybe for the movies, but not for TV or video games. There's a reason that Lightwave is used so extensively in TV.
"Derp de derp."
Of course, I am pretty sure DW are not running 2.4.9-x kernel, either. Whichever kernel it is, it's been hacked by Alan Cox and sorts. It must be fast as hell if DreamWorks rolled it out on ALL their machines.
I know you were being sarcastic but thanks to slashdoters emailing and calling there representatives it died. However I am sure its not the last attempt the MPAA will try to kill the IT industry. So some of you can relax for now.
http://saveie6.com/
I assume it was with made with irix as well considering that FreeBSD has NO and I mean NO commercial 3d tools at all whatsoever. OpenGl and framebuffering is not supported as well. Even if there were 3d apps available, the performance would suck with linux emulated opengl running in non framebuffered mode. I was in disbelief when the computer arts condinator of the flick said no other OS was capable of doing the effects. Uh?
Anyway I believe this is changing for FreeBSD 5.0 but I will keep it as a server OS for now.
http://saveie6.com/
Nope, I agree that older versions of Photoshop had useful features, but the other day I was reading the specs for PS7 with a graphically oriented friend of mine and we both felt the update had nothing of worth to offer. Photoshop shouldn't add all those crappy effects and claim it's a worthwhile update - it isn't.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
It looks like Corel jumped the gun on their Linux support and Adobe might have a little better timing. Adobe porting to Linux reminds me of what Corel tried to do, and failed. I think the timing is better now and the Linux community has better backing now (at least in the news). Adobe might have the bucks to wait for their Linux line to mature while it gains acceptance (would your Windows/Mac shop run Adobe Photoshop 1.0 for Linux or wait for 2.0?)
Adobe seems to be a little better at selling things anyway, plus their products have a far loyal following than Corel.
Geez, imagine if Photoshop was ported to Linux. How many Photoshop workstations are there in the world? Probably tons. Of course, I'm getting all excited over rumors at this point, but I think it's only a matter of time.
It's Dreamwork SKG, which makes this kinda interesting, seeing as SKG stands for Spielberg, Katzenburg, Gates. So linux is an evil scourge, unless you're talking about Billy's movie studio, then it's okay....
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
It has had an AIX version as well. And it was much better then the windows version at the time.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Well FreeBSD runs most Linux binaries as well as Linux and this includes renderers like Renderman. The performance under FreeBSD turned out run Linux binaries better than Linux when the servers were under heavy load - which was generally the case.
-- SIGFPE
the first company to dedicate resources to porting their high-end SGI IRIX 3D software to linux was from: Side Effects. HOUDINI's the software they used to do gandalf's fireworks, the river stallions, and the effects in 'what dreams may come' and 'the matrix' -- on LINUX!
john.
but do you have a source for this?
I'd love to see something concrete to throw back in the faces of the Naomi Kleins of the world.
D
- They're going to drop the price from $9,995 to $999.
- ... but it will run only on Macs
...
- ... but you shouldn't be too upset, since you could buy a top of the line Mac for $3,000 and a $999 copy of Shake and still be way ahead of the game.
Apple, like Adobe, has generally been outstanding in supporting the software it buys - reducing prices substantially, making continuous improvements, and so on. Very cool.D
Ogle does menus, awesome program. The only one I've ever seen that bothered with them,
check it out: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
They have a really nice ad campaign that I see on sites like creativepro.com - it's the only popup ad I can say I like. It comes up as a cute little game you can play with their particle system - they have the name of the company, and if you mouse over a letter it explodes. If you leave it alone it will gradually reform back into the original letter.
:-(.
It made me click and find out the program's $4,995. Ouch. I bought After Effects by buying an old shrinkwrapped $399 version on eBay and then getting a $299 upgrade, therefore saving me almost 50% over the $1,500 price. (I got the high-end production bundle which has all the cool goodies). Alas, that's about as much as I can justify paying for a program, although I might figure out a similar way to get Maya someday.
Point being, dabblers like me can't afford the alternatives just yet
In all seriousness, the real problem with Adobe is that, in every way but this DCMA nonsense, it's a fantastic company, with great products. True, it's a near-monopoly, but that's because the products are the best that exist, at least in their price points.
So what they have done is built up an immense degree of good will, and in the end for most customers, I think the Dimitri case has damaged but not destroyed that good will.
It's like my boss. He, I and a contractor who had created a horrible product for us under Windows were sitting in the office. The contractor said "Windows is a master at settled, safe mediocrity", implying that converting to Linux would damage this fortunate circumstance. My boss said that he didn't believe mediocrity had a place in his company. As a result, the campaign I had to convert our online order entry system to Linux proceeded, and now our entire company's front office functions are running happily on Linux.
Since then, he's done some unfair things to me. But on the whole my job is pretty darn good. So do I sacrifice my job on principle, or do I stay in what is, after all, a pretty good, high-paying position?
In the end, I compromise. And I compromise on Adobe too. The day I stop buying Adobe products will be the day they decline substantially in quality.
D
"Why didn't you just parent the eye objects to a null and move the null to where-ever the object of interest were in the scene? "
a.) Eyes do a LOT of movement, really fast. Manually keyframing that would have been a bitch.
b.) Doing whatyou suggest would involve moving the null in 3 Dimensional space (x, y, z) but with this technique I simplified it down to (x,y)
c.) The way I did it made it more like moving a puppet, so I got more motion out of it.
"Derp de derp."
Oh, and if their behavior on Mac/PC is any indication, you won't be able to switch your license. I had Pagemaker for the Mac and when I got my upgrade notice I asked if I could upgrade to Pagemaker for Windows instead (same price, so why not?) but they refused. That's when I stopped using Pagemaker and learned to make due with Word for Windows, which did most of what I wanted anyway. Mind you, I'd have made the switch if I were desktop publishing for a living (I was just doing a simple newsletter for a club) but I'd still have been pissed about their policy.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Now I am not a graphics designer, but I have dabbled a little bit. Just a little bit. FOR THE MONEY, I don't know if you can do much better than The Gimp . Like I said, I am sure if you are a professional designer, Photoshop is THE way to go. However, after hearing great things about the Gimp, I downloaded it. Free. Not much easier on your wallet than that. From what I have found, it is quite powerful. I am not a Photoshop user, but I was and continue to be quite impressed. Maybe it isn't up to your standards, but it fully meets mine. Oh, did I mention it was free? :-) And they even have a Windows port. Find Grokking the Gimp online, or pick it up in a bookstore for a great manual.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Hardware accelerated OpenGL is probably more important than any other thing to change our ability to use Linux on the desktop.
Linux is faster, cheaper, and if you're writing the bulk of your own software (CGI houses fall into this category) in anything but Objective C, better than MacOS X.
Just because it looks pretty doesn't automatically mean it works well.
I use MacOS X. Every day on my G4 Powerbook. And the reason i am typing this on the linux box sitting under my desk is that Linux is a hell of a lot more responsive and easier to work with than OS X, which just doesn't perform well.
YMMV, but i find using OS X is ugly. really ugly. I won't go into a point-by-point bitch session about everything i dislike about OS X, since lack of speed is the one overriding problem i have.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Lightwave you mean? Hmm... I'm a little surprised I never discovered that, heh.
:)
Aura can definitely do that. Aura captures mouse movements and sends the motion data to LW.
I just thought it was cool that I used unusual means to get a problem solved.
"Derp de derp."
I'll go up there as a volunteer! Chance of a lifetime. Who wouldn't?
Depends. What if the rocket is also being built by volunteers? That's even worse than the current situation, in which rockets are built by the lowest bidder.
I think he means that Adobe for Linux on the Mac would be a simple recompile of Adobe for Linux on Intel (or visa-versa)
It wouldn't be just a recompile because of the SIMD/Alitvec optimizations.
"Sorry, the Gimp is nice and all... played with it extensively in fact... but it just doesn't cut it upside Photoshop."
Aside from the lack of CMYK support (a *long* known issue), where else does it not cut it?
1. User interface... and this may have changed for the better since I last played with the Gimp. It seems like every option or operation that is contextual to the picture is contained with an application level menu while every option that is global in scope like saving a file, etc... is accessed by a right-click context menu. It was confusing as hell the first several times I tried to save an image from the file menu without realizing that you had to right-click on an image to save it. While there is some quality code there, the developers could stand to spend some time on usability and flow. Even if they want to keep commands where they have them for personality or continuity's sake... they could replicate them where they 'belong'.
2. Paint controls. In many cases, the controls just don't have the fine level of manipulation that Photoshop allows. Paintbrush fall-off is a good example. Brush construction is another. Again, this may have changed in the last few months, but...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Yeah I've heard of POV Ray. I'd rather pay the money and use Lightwave.
"Derp de derp."